News in Brief: Oct. 5 to 11

The 67th Associated Students Senate passed two resolutions at last Wednesday’s weekly meeting. The first resolution, proposed by Senators Felipe Recinos and Patrick Dohoney, affirms Senate’s support of UC Sustain Our Students, a systemwide campaign agreed upon by representatives at the UC Student Association Forum in August to solve housing, food, and overall economic insecurity for UC students. The second resolution, proposed by Senators Unique Vance and Matt Greenberg, pledges Senate’s collective effort to push all academic departments to reveal the origins of research funding. The hope, said Vance, is to eliminate the opportunity for conflict of interests to arise, and keep research both valid and unbiased. The meeting was cut short when firefighters announced a gas leak in the building and mandated a building wide evacuation.

The University of California, Santa Barbara Library has received a $100,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The grant, which was secured by the UCSB Library’s humanities data curator Thomas Padilla, will support the multi-institutional project “Always Already Computational: Library Collection as Data.” Project team members will work to develop strategies that allow users to utilize digital library collections in the most effective way.

The University of California, Santa Barbara Foundation Board, which is largely in charge of fundraising and endowments, has elected alumni Laurie Bentson Kauth, Claudia Webster, and Howard Wenger. The three newcomers will work with existing board members to increase professional and business support for university programs.

ISLA VISTA

Isla Vista residents kicked off the weekend with October’s First Friday festivities, an alternative nightlife event that started in 2014 following the Isla Vista tragedy. The event offered free food from local businesses, including Woodstock’s and Kyle’s Kitchen, and featured performances from local musicians Choice, Kaysin and The Real Savage Henry. Over 500 people attended.

COUNTY/STATE

West Goleta residents reported a particularly strong odor around 4 a.m. Sunday morning. Though officials at the County Air Pollution Control District initially suspected the odor originated from either an agricultural water well or Venoco’s Ellwood Onshore Facility emissions, the plant, located several hundred feet from Haskell’s Beach, recorded relatively normal levels of hydrogen sulfide levels on Sunday morning. Officials now believe the sour gas like odor, that is causing both nausea and headaches in affected residents, is coming from the waterwell, which isin the West Goleta vicinity. Some residents in the surrounding areas voluntarily evacuated for the day.

With a “D” rating from the American Lung Association, Santa Barbara City’s 14-year-old smoking ordinance underwent a series of much needed proposed updates at last Tuesday’s City Hall meeting. City Hall staff highlighted that smoking could be further banned at all outdoor restaurant and bar seating at all times (as opposed to the only 25 percent ban that currently exists on outdoor restaurant seating), festivals, beaches, sidewalks, and parking structures, among other areas. While bar and club owners expressed dissent, most community members were in support of the breadth of the newly proposed ordinance.

The Trader Joe’s at the Calle Real Shopping Center in Goleta, with its notoriously cramped parking lot, was the scene of yet another grocery store run gone awry when an 85-year-old man, who sustained minor injuries, drove through the market’s front door on Saturday morning. One shopper suffered major injuries and was rushed to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. Two children in the store had minor injuries, but did not require hospital care. No other shoppers were injured.

UPDATE:

Oct. 12, 1:20 p.m.: In Volume 11, Issue 4, it was reported that the gas odor could have come from Venoco’s Ellwood Onshore Facility. Officials suspected it could have come from the facility or the agricultural water well.